Drama ensued in Parliament this afternoon when the entire opposition legislators, accompanied by some few Independent MPs, walked out of Parliament, protesting the rejection by their NRM colleagues of a proposal to have each party represented in parliament get a slot at the East African Legislative Assembly – EALA.
The walk out followed a heated debate that started in the morning and went on till late in the afternoon, with both sides refusing to budge on their demands. The NRM side has since the EALA election stalemate insisted on sending up to six or seven representatives while the opposition demanded that NRM, Jeema, FDC, CP, DP and UPC each get one representative.
Following the stalemate, the NRM side, given its numerical strength in the house, suggested that they decide on the matter through voting, since consensus had failed. The ruling party has 264 MPs against 57 for the opposition and 43 Independents.
Eventually, Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi suggested that voting was the best tested procedure used internationally.
When the opposition lost the vote to have an amendment of having every party get a slot accepted, Leader of Opposition, Nandala Mafabi announced to the house that they would not participate in the entire election process since the NRM was using its numbers to take decisions.
Nandala accused the ruling party of going against the spirit of the East African treaty. His colleagues immediately followed him out of the plenary, with NRM MPs shouting “we have numbers”, “let’s vote”.
The Deputy Speaker of Parliament Jacob Oulanyah urgently called on the clerk Assistants to physically count the NRM members present together with some 20 Independent MPs, to establish whether there was quorum to take a decision.
At the end of the counting, Oulanyah announced that there were 165 MPs in the house, more than the needed quorum of 125 members to proceed.
The opposition party members later addressed a press conference in parliament at which they said they would not participate in the EALA voting and instead will go to court to interpret the provisions of Article 50 of the treaty which talks about the feasibility term in determining representation.
Some members of the NRM who attended yesterday’s caucus have now been intimating that they would vote only their members to the regional assembly and leave out the opposition.
